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Cash and Credit Registers

Electronic Cash Registers and Point-of-Sale Terminals

Some of these devices simply combined a printing electronic calculator with a cash drawer. More elaborate registers not only tracked accumulated receipts, like a traditional cash register, but handled credit card transactions and allowed clerks to scan merchandise to read off prices. These, in turn, served as input for computer systems.

The Regitel is an early point-of-sale (POS) electronic cash register. Such terminals capture information about sales for computer processing.

The device was made by the American Regitel Corporation and installed as a part of a networked system in department stores across the nation. The networks communicated over telephone systems at 9600 baud, which was extremely fast for the time period.

A mark on the front reads: REGITEL. A mark on tape on the bottom of the machine reads: Theresa 3-22-71.

For related documentation, see 2002.0091.02 through 2002.0091.06.

American Regitel Corporation was founded in Palo Alto, California, in 1968. The firm was acquired by Motorola in 1970.

By the late 1960s, minicomputers were sufficiently cheap to envision using them to automate much of the pricing and sale of groceries. RCA Corporation, working in conjunction with Kroger Company, developed a supermarket checkstand that linked to an RCA 6100 minicomputer. This is an example of the checkstand. It first operated at a Kroger’s store in Kenwood, Ohio, near Cincinnati, in July, 1972. The tests were quite successful, running for many weeks. However, the device relied on a different identification code than the Universal Product Code adopted the following year. RCA decided not to try to sell point-of-sale terminals.

On 26 June 1974, the first installation of supermarket scanners entered service in a Marsh supermarket in Troy, Ohio. This Spectra Physics model A price scanner, is one of those first ten scanners. A package of Wrigley's chewing gum became the first purchase made with scanners that could read the new Uniform Product Code (UPC or barcode). Mounted within the unit a helium-neon laser projected a beam onto a rotating mirror and thence up through a glass plate on the top surface. The light reflected from the code label on the package and was detected by a photo-diode. A computerized cash register matched the signal from the photo-diode with information in a stored database to determine which product was being scanned.

Spectra Physics and NCR jointly developed the system, and provided the laser scanner and the computerized cash register, respectively. A group called the "Ad Hoc Committee of the Grocery Industry" developed the barcode itself. Organized in 1970 by the consulting firm McKinsey & Co., the Ad Hoc Committee consisted of senior executives of leading firms in the grocery industry. The coding system they devised had an enormous impact on a wide range of applications, most notably for retail sales and inventory control.

This beige electronic cash register has a printing mechanism, an LED display, and a separate, locked cash drawer with a broken key. The interior of the register is accessible and includes a number of circuit boards, the printer mechanism, wires, and fuses. Two circuit boards are covered in plastic and one had double-stick tape and foam attached to it to block the heat of the power source. A disintegrating foam panel is in the front of the unit. Paper and a print cartridge are still in the machine.

A tag on the top front of the machine reads: MKDBantam. A Hayman Cash Register Co. sticker is below this. The register has serial number 940561.

MKD Corporation, formed in 1972, sold both point-of-sale terminals and low-cost electronic cash registers.

This yellow-tinted electronic cash register sits atop an off-white cash drawer. It has black keyboard keys, a printer for receipts, and a red digital display. The key that opens the cash drawer is missing.

A mark on the left front reads: CHECK-A-TRON. The machine has serial number 4500032. Stanley Hayman Business Machines stickers are on the front and the back.

Check-A-Tron began selling an American-built electronic cash register in 1975. In 1977 it introduced the MICROS electronic cash register/point-of-sale terminal. The firm also distributed Sanyo cash registers made in Japan. According to a mark on this machine, it was assembled in the United States. By 1983 Check-A-Tron Corporation was out of the cash register business entirely.